That Stupid Guy (but not Alfie's Stupid Guy)
I'm still slowly working through Handsome Siblings. It's like a roller coaster. The first 10 episodes are crap and I almost gave up. But then I thought it got really interesting for about 10 episodes until it flattened out. I'm at around 37, 38 and it was almost picking up again but I've just been very busy at work recently so have had no motivation to watch it after wards.
In any event, Henry and I kept up our nightly drama watching and finished Amensalism rather fast.
Or, "I can't believe I remembered how to spell that word without looking it up!"
Plot
I mainly wanted to watch this drama because the plot sounded interesting and I like Lorene Ren. The story is about the ML who dreams about people's deaths but cannot prevent them until he meets FL.
I frankly thought it was going to be about them trying to prevent people's deaths. But the drama ended up being about the mystery surrounding how FL's parents died and what happened to ML's dad.
Cast and Characters
Bi Ke Wei, Esq. is played by Lorene Ren (The Crossing Hero, K.O. 3 Guo, Someone Like You).
I like Lorene Ren a good amount since she's so fat-faced and cute. I'll probably try and watch anything she's in that sounds interesting.
I also like the character, Bi Ke Wei, in general since she's an intelligent professional and the drama actually shows her using her intelligence and related professionalism.
Like, she's a lawyer that actually has legal knowledge and uses it to advance plot (sure, by suing people, but still). It's a vast improvement over some dramas where the FL is supposed to be some sort of professional but ends up being clumsy, unlucky in love, unlucky in general, no social skills, etc.
Cheng You Kuan is "played" by Prince Chiu.
For a long time, I debated whether or not I want to watch Attention, Love! because I like Joanne Tseng and Greg Hsu. But after watching Prince Chiu in this drama, I do not ever want to watch another drama in which he's the ML.
His character, Cheng You Kuan, probably maybe might not be such a terrible character if a better actor was cast in the role. But alas, we're stuck with Prince Chiu and his stupid face.
Pretty much the only expression he has for 90% of the drama.
MTE, Bi Ke Wei.
I think his face shape reminds me of young, pre-face bloat Leonardo DiCaprio, but without the charisma and acting ability. And I'm not using that comparison as a compliment, since I never found even pre-face bloat Leonardo DiCaprio that good looking.
The much better second ML, Li Yao Qin, is played by Andy Wu.
Both the character and the actor are better in every way over Cheng You Kuan and Prince Chiu. This is one of those baffling things where I wonder what makes one actor more popular than another and why the heck FL sees in ML.
Second FL Xu Ming Fei is played by Eleven Yao. At some point, I said that this actress - in certain makeup and angles - look like Kiera Knightly. Henry just looked at me like I was crazy.
Maybe I've been watching too many dramas that I can't remember what western entertainers look like anymore.
I never seen anything with Eleven Yao before, but I also think she's a better actress than Lorene Ren. I do like Xu Ming Fei as a character. She's also a professional and intelligent woman.
Pros and Cons
Pro - Strong Female Characters
Ready to righteously punch someone.
For drama, this story has pretty good female characters. As briefly talked about in the above, both the FL and second FL are working professionals. While there's been infuriating dramas in the past where the professional female characters are too dumb for life or for inexplicable reasons, clumsy/unlucky, this drama refreshingly have these women be good at their jobs and they can function in life without men telling them what's good for them (ie. Murphy's Law of Love - psychiatrist, but clumsy AF). I also like that they're at the top of their careers rather than being the secretary/administrative assistant while the ML is the CEO/general rich guy (ie. Fated to Love You, Office Girls)
The two main females aside, I also think other females are portrayed pretty positively here. There's ML's mom, who is shown being a strong, opinionated woman. There's Xiao Mi, the bodyguard that works at ML's security firm. There's Xu Ming Fei's mom, who has a career being a famous artist.
So in general, I would say I like how the female characters are written in this drama. Most have successful careers and they're not the drama stereotype where they need men to come along and help them be better. They experience conflict and have flaws. And they're realistic flaws as opposed to being randomly clumsy.
Con - Weak Male Lead
With all those strong female characters, I think it makes the ML come off even worse. And that's really odd to me because I assume the writer has some awareness of What Not To Do with female drama characters. But they decide to heap all manners of bad drama cliches onto the ML.
Dat face, man.
He's tortured, self sacrificing to the point of idiocracy, and just a general "perfect looking" human being that's too cool to have an expression on his face. The last is honestly all Prince Chiu's fault. Like, act better, man! The internet tells me he's in a boy band. I suppose that explains it.
Shocking, right? Any ogre can be in a boy band these days?
Con - Ace
Of all the things wrong with this drama's writing, I'm choosing to be picky and nitpick this character's name.
The character is fine. In fact, he could be the ML with his acting abilities and it wouldn't make a difference.
The issue is with his name, Ace. Everyone pronounce it as "Ice". I don't expect a foreign show to have perfect English. But when your cast can't pronounce a name, change the name to something else. Especially since it's not like Ace is a major character and his name has any impact on...anything. It just sounds incredibly silly anytime they call this guy Ice.
But since we're on the topic of the show's writing, it falls apart after a strong first few episodes. Too much of it focuses on Cheng You Kuan's pain and his suffering when it could be focusing on his death dreams and Bi Ke Wei and him trying to stop those deaths.
The writing also suffers from reveals happening after the fact. I can't even remember enough of the drama to think of particular instances, but there are several times where something dramatic happens to make the audience think the main leads are in trouble.
OMG! What's gonna happen?
But then there's a flashback reveal to show that the leads had an alternate plan all along to save the day. It just seems like a cheap way to play on the audience's emotions/create fake suspense.
No one was impressed by the lackluster writing.
The ending was also one of the worst. There's also a fake out and then a flashback reveal to show why a certain person didn't actually die. Except the flashback explained nothing.
Con - Music
I tend to think Taiwanese dramas have pretty good soundtracks. Not any more, thanks to Amensalism!
Prince Chiu does the opening song:
I guess it doesn't suck. But it's not good either. If sandwiches are neutral, it's like a pretty terrible sandwich.
And no one likes terrible sandwiches.
Then there's some insert song (not even going to look it up) where it was blues, but with banjos? It was so odd.
Conclusion
I would say this was a big letdown after Someday or One Day. But I guess that drama was so good it's definitely hard to follow. The start of the drama was pretty good and I like the concept of amensalism and how the plot tires to work that in. I also thought the side plot with Ming Fei's look alike stalker was fairly interesting and I wish the story had continued down that vein instead of the actual, more boring plot. Still, I would still try Lorene Ren and Eleven Yao's dramas while staying far, far away from Prince Chiu and his face.
In any event, Henry and I kept up our nightly drama watching and finished Amensalism rather fast.
Or, "I can't believe I remembered how to spell that word without looking it up!"
Plot
I mainly wanted to watch this drama because the plot sounded interesting and I like Lorene Ren. The story is about the ML who dreams about people's deaths but cannot prevent them until he meets FL.
I frankly thought it was going to be about them trying to prevent people's deaths. But the drama ended up being about the mystery surrounding how FL's parents died and what happened to ML's dad.
Cast and Characters
Bi Ke Wei, Esq. is played by Lorene Ren (The Crossing Hero, K.O. 3 Guo, Someone Like You).
I like Lorene Ren a good amount since she's so fat-faced and cute. I'll probably try and watch anything she's in that sounds interesting.
I also like the character, Bi Ke Wei, in general since she's an intelligent professional and the drama actually shows her using her intelligence and related professionalism.
Like, she's a lawyer that actually has legal knowledge and uses it to advance plot (sure, by suing people, but still). It's a vast improvement over some dramas where the FL is supposed to be some sort of professional but ends up being clumsy, unlucky in love, unlucky in general, no social skills, etc.
Cheng You Kuan is "played" by Prince Chiu.
For a long time, I debated whether or not I want to watch Attention, Love! because I like Joanne Tseng and Greg Hsu. But after watching Prince Chiu in this drama, I do not ever want to watch another drama in which he's the ML.
His character, Cheng You Kuan, probably maybe might not be such a terrible character if a better actor was cast in the role. But alas, we're stuck with Prince Chiu and his stupid face.
Pretty much the only expression he has for 90% of the drama.
MTE, Bi Ke Wei.
I think his face shape reminds me of young, pre-face bloat Leonardo DiCaprio, but without the charisma and acting ability. And I'm not using that comparison as a compliment, since I never found even pre-face bloat Leonardo DiCaprio that good looking.
The much better second ML, Li Yao Qin, is played by Andy Wu.
Both the character and the actor are better in every way over Cheng You Kuan and Prince Chiu. This is one of those baffling things where I wonder what makes one actor more popular than another and why the heck FL sees in ML.
Second FL Xu Ming Fei is played by Eleven Yao. At some point, I said that this actress - in certain makeup and angles - look like Kiera Knightly. Henry just looked at me like I was crazy.
Maybe I've been watching too many dramas that I can't remember what western entertainers look like anymore.
I never seen anything with Eleven Yao before, but I also think she's a better actress than Lorene Ren. I do like Xu Ming Fei as a character. She's also a professional and intelligent woman.
Pros and Cons
Pro - Strong Female Characters
Ready to righteously punch someone.
For drama, this story has pretty good female characters. As briefly talked about in the above, both the FL and second FL are working professionals. While there's been infuriating dramas in the past where the professional female characters are too dumb for life or for inexplicable reasons, clumsy/unlucky, this drama refreshingly have these women be good at their jobs and they can function in life without men telling them what's good for them (ie. Murphy's Law of Love - psychiatrist, but clumsy AF). I also like that they're at the top of their careers rather than being the secretary/administrative assistant while the ML is the CEO/general rich guy (ie. Fated to Love You, Office Girls)
The two main females aside, I also think other females are portrayed pretty positively here. There's ML's mom, who is shown being a strong, opinionated woman. There's Xiao Mi, the bodyguard that works at ML's security firm. There's Xu Ming Fei's mom, who has a career being a famous artist.
So in general, I would say I like how the female characters are written in this drama. Most have successful careers and they're not the drama stereotype where they need men to come along and help them be better. They experience conflict and have flaws. And they're realistic flaws as opposed to being randomly clumsy.
Con - Weak Male Lead
With all those strong female characters, I think it makes the ML come off even worse. And that's really odd to me because I assume the writer has some awareness of What Not To Do with female drama characters. But they decide to heap all manners of bad drama cliches onto the ML.
Dat face, man.
He's tortured, self sacrificing to the point of idiocracy, and just a general "perfect looking" human being that's too cool to have an expression on his face. The last is honestly all Prince Chiu's fault. Like, act better, man! The internet tells me he's in a boy band. I suppose that explains it.
Shocking, right? Any ogre can be in a boy band these days?
Con - Ace
Of all the things wrong with this drama's writing, I'm choosing to be picky and nitpick this character's name.
The character is fine. In fact, he could be the ML with his acting abilities and it wouldn't make a difference.
The issue is with his name, Ace. Everyone pronounce it as "Ice". I don't expect a foreign show to have perfect English. But when your cast can't pronounce a name, change the name to something else. Especially since it's not like Ace is a major character and his name has any impact on...anything. It just sounds incredibly silly anytime they call this guy Ice.
But since we're on the topic of the show's writing, it falls apart after a strong first few episodes. Too much of it focuses on Cheng You Kuan's pain and his suffering when it could be focusing on his death dreams and Bi Ke Wei and him trying to stop those deaths.
The writing also suffers from reveals happening after the fact. I can't even remember enough of the drama to think of particular instances, but there are several times where something dramatic happens to make the audience think the main leads are in trouble.
OMG! What's gonna happen?
But then there's a flashback reveal to show that the leads had an alternate plan all along to save the day. It just seems like a cheap way to play on the audience's emotions/create fake suspense.
No one was impressed by the lackluster writing.
The ending was also one of the worst. There's also a fake out and then a flashback reveal to show why a certain person didn't actually die. Except the flashback explained nothing.
Con - Music
I tend to think Taiwanese dramas have pretty good soundtracks. Not any more, thanks to Amensalism!
Prince Chiu does the opening song:
Click to viewI guess it doesn't suck. But it's not good either. If sandwiches are neutral, it's like a pretty terrible sandwich.
And no one likes terrible sandwiches.
Then there's some insert song (not even going to look it up) where it was blues, but with banjos? It was so odd.
Conclusion
I would say this was a big letdown after Someday or One Day. But I guess that drama was so good it's definitely hard to follow. The start of the drama was pretty good and I like the concept of amensalism and how the plot tires to work that in. I also thought the side plot with Ming Fei's look alike stalker was fairly interesting and I wish the story had continued down that vein instead of the actual, more boring plot. Still, I would still try Lorene Ren and Eleven Yao's dramas while staying far, far away from Prince Chiu and his face.